evals-skills README

The project's README from github.com/ai-evals-course/evals-skills. As one markdown file: README.md.

Eval Skills

Skills that guide AI coding agents to help you build product-specific AI evals (not foundation model benchmarks).

These skills guard against common mistakes we've seen helping 50+ companies and teaching thousands of students in our AI Evals course.

Why skills for evals

There are many easily avoidable footguns in evals. These skills help you avoid them.

evals-start is the entry point. It looks at your situation and routes you to the right skill. Most of the time it will send you to one of these two:

Installation

Install with npx skills:

npx skills add https://github.com/ai-evals-course/evals-skills

Install one skill only:

npx skills add https://github.com/ai-evals-course/evals-skills --skill error-discovery

Check for updates:

npx skills check
npx skills update

Available skills

Skill What it does
evals-start Entry point. Routes to the skill that matches your situation
eval-audit Audit an eval pipeline and surface problems with prioritized severity
error-discovery Build a review app, select diverse samples, and organize your notes into failure modes
generate-synthetic-data Create diverse synthetic test inputs using dimension-based tuple generation
write-judge-prompt Design LLM-as-Judge evaluators for subjective quality criteria
validate-evaluator Calibrate LLM judges against human labels using data splits, TPR/TNR, and bias correction
evaluate-rag Evaluate retrieval and generation quality in RAG pipelines
build-review-interface Build custom annotation interfaces for human trace review

The error-discovery skill

The error-discovery skill in the plugin is the most important. Error discovery involves qualitative and quantitative analysis of your traces to find failure modes. You should only write evals after doing this step.

This skill makes an AI agent run error analysis on a dataset. Point it at a JSONL/CSV/JSON file of LLM outputs or traces, and it:

  1. Reads the dataset and figures out the content type (articles, agent traces, code, structured output, etc.).
  2. Designs visual encoding based on what varies in the data. Uses Gestalt principles (color for categories, spacing for hierarchy, opacity for importance).
  3. Builds a single-file HTML review app served by a Python stdlib server. No dependencies.
  4. Clusters the data and picks a diverse initial sample (cluster reps + random picks).
  5. Runs an interactive loop: monitors annotations, categorizes failure modes, proposes new samples to increase coverage.

Error Discovery Skill Workflow

You read and leave free-text notes. The agent sorts them into failure modes, tracks coverage, and picks new samples to fill gaps.

Once installed, point the agent at a dataset:

Can you help me do error analysis on traces.jsonl?

Write your own skills

These skills encode common mistakes that generalize across projects. Skills grounded in your own data and domain will outperform them. Start here, then write your own. Matt Pocock's writing-for-ai-agents is a good resource.

Beyond these skills

These skills cover the parts of eval work that generalize across projects. Much of the process doesn't, such as production monitoring, CI/CD regression suites, and cost optimization. The AI Evals course covers those.

evals-skills (ai-evals-course/evals-skills)

llm-evaluation
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What is this?A collection of agent skills that guide AI coding agents to build product-specific AI evals — not foundation-model benchmarks. It encodes mistakes the authors saw across 50+ companies and thousands of students in their AI Evals course.
So is this a tool I run myself, or instructions my coding agent follows?Not an app — it's a set of skills your AI coding agent loads and follows. 'evals-start' is the entry point: it looks at your situation and routes you to the right skill.
How do I install the skills?Run 'npx skills' to install them into your coding agent. You can also install just one skill, and check for updates with separate commands.
Do I need to install anything besides a coding agent?No — just your existing AI coding agent. The only runtime touchpoint is error-discovery's generated review app: a single-file HTML page served by a Python stdlib server with zero dependencies.
What parts of eval work do these skills not cover?Only the parts that generalize across projects. Production monitoring, CI/CD regression suites, and cost optimization are explicitly out of scope — the team's AI Evals course covers those.
I'm building an AI product but new to evals — where do I start?These skills are aimed at developers building evals for their own product, and they encode mistakes from helping 50+ companies and teaching thousands of students. evals-start will send you to eval-audit if you already have a pipeline, or error-discovery if you have traces you haven't analyzed yet.
What skills are in the collection?Eight: evals-start (entry point that routes you), eval-audit (audits an existing eval pipeline and flags problems by severity), error-discovery (builds a review app and sorts traces into failure modes), generate-synthetic-data (dimension-based tuple generation), write-judge-prompt (designs LLM-as-Judge evaluators), validate-evaluator (calibrates judges against human labels with TPR/TNR and bias correction), evaluate-rag (retrieval and generation quality), and build-review-interface (custom annotation UIs).
Why is error-discovery called the most important skill?Because you should only write evals after doing error analysis. You point it at a JSONL/CSV/JSON file of LLM outputs or traces: it builds a review app, clusters the data and picks a diverse sample, then runs an interactive loop — your free-text notes get sorted into failure modes while it picks new samples to fill coverage gaps.
Why skills instead of just reading an evals guide?There are many easily avoidable footguns in evals. The skills encode the common mistakes the AI Evals course team saw helping 50+ companies, so your agent sidesteps them while building evals for your specific product.
Can I write my own eval skills?Yes, and the authors encourage it: these only cover what generalizes across projects, while skills grounded in your own data and domain will outperform them. Matt Pocock's writing-for-ai-agents is a good starting resource.
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